Australian Beef association Chairman Brad Bellinger writes:ABA Chairman Brad Bellinger said today, “The National Farmers Federation (NFF) TV advertisements criticising the ALP policy to pilfer the Coalition’s $2billion Communications Fund if elected, only illustrates how gullible and short sighted the NFF has been, in not opposing the sale of Telstra, in the first placeâ€.
When the 2005 Telstra sell-off occurred, Peter Corrish the then NFF President, stated that “a combination of strong legislation and a guarantee on funding will deliver the best outcome we can hope for.â€
Commentators and journalists at the time pointed out that no fund could ever be given iron clad protection from a change of government and this is being born out right now.
“Had the NFF not backed the Howard’s Government’s sell-off of this important public utility and in doing so, removed the checks and balances put in place to ensure all Australians had access to world class telecommunications, the NFF would not have found themselves so embarrassingly and hypocritically, exposedâ€, Mr Bellinger said.
Mr Bellinger added, “The NFF’s Trade Policy for the 2007 election is even more short sighted and deregulationist than their Communications Policy in 2005. They advocated for the 2004 FTA with the USA. They are now pushing “Free Trade Agreements†with China, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, ASEAN/New Zealand; - just to name a few.
Australian farmers are already being put out of business by cheap, subsidized, low quality imports.
The “free trade†mania of the NFF under David Crombie’s leadership has already become more irresponsible and dangerous.
It is a real concern that Mr Crombie has a record of being prepared to sacrifice some of our smaller and not so small agricultural industries. As the Chairman of Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA), he supported the signing of FTA with the USA, in August 2004.
“Australian pig producers are currently being bankrupted by subsidized imports of pork from Denmark, Canada and the USA, with 60% of domestic consumption originating from those three sources.
Since the advent of the US FTA in 2004, US imports alone have increased 23 times from 1,200 tonnes to 27,900 tonnes,†Mr Bellinger said.
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